In France 1940 an unlikely pair team up to evade the approaching Nazis. Little Jacobowsky a Polish Jewish intellectual has been one step ahead of the Nazis for years. Stjerbinsky is an aristocratic anti-Semitic Polish colonel who’s trying to get to England. Jacobowsky has a car but can’t drive; the colonel can. And so begins their adventurous journey – set against a backdrop of lively and lovely songs and dances – that takes them to a carnival a Jewish wedding and when the car breaks down onto a train. Accompanying them is Marianne the colonel’s girlfriend with whom Jacobowsky falls in love. But it is not to be.